Japan and Caucasian Émigré Forces Ë 137
once an opportunity for war had been recognized: in London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna,
Helsinki, Tallin, Kowno, Warsaw, Bucharest, Istanbul, and Ankara, as well as Tehran
and Kabul. Ironically, this instruction fell into Soviet hands and was subsequently
submitted by Moscow at the Tokyo War Crimes tribunal following World War II.³⁹
Japan’s intensi ed intelligence activity in Europe, the Middle East, and the
Balkan peninsula (particularly Romania and Yugoslavia) as well as the Baltic states
was immediately noticed by the Poles, who were operating the rival movement of
Prometheanism. The Poles described Japan’s activity as relying on the “Turan Soci-
ety” of émigrés from Turkestan and the Caucasus, an intelligence organization that
was “naively conspiratorial.” The Poles reported that Japan and its intelligence were
pursuing “practical avenues,” using, for example, commercial rms in Persia.⁴⁰Fur-
thermore, some Polish intelligence o cials suspected, almost certainly wrongly, that
Japanese and British intelligence services were working together in Turkey and Persia
for technical and tactical reasons, that Japan was closely collaborating with Estonian
intelligence with Britain’s approval, and that Japan possessed “very ne intelligence
elements in Soviet territory.”⁴¹In December 1933, Japan also set up special operation
stations in Paris and Berlin, which worked independently of the diplomatic legations.
Unlike Britain and the United States, and conscious of competition with them, France
had some ardent defenders of Japan’s policy toward China, which they considered an
ungoverned and ungovernable place unworthy of a nation. Paris, fearing the conta-
gious eects of disorder in China on its Indochinese colonies, saw in Japan a strong
hand that could ensure stability in China.⁴²Probably for this reason, Japan was able
to station special agents in Paris. Yet apparently responding to pressure from Moscow,
France closed Japan’s special station in Paris in December 1934, whereas the one in
Berlin operated into the 1940s.⁴³
Japan’s striking blitzkrieg in Jehol, discussed above, also coincided with its with-
drawal from the League of Nations (in February 1933). As an American reported from
Geneva:
The Japanese delegation, defying world opinion, withdrew from the League of Nations Assembly
today after the assembly had adopted a report blaming Japan for events in Manchuria.39 NARA, RG331, Evidentiary Document 2979.
40 Speaking in 1935, Noe Zhordania stated that Japan had received permission to build two naval
bases in Bushehr and Mishach (?) in the Persian Gulf to surround the Caucasus. This cannot be
con rmed by other sources. See Georges Mamoulia, ed.,Kavkazkaia Konfederatsiia v o tsial’nykh
deklaratsiiakh, tainoi perepiske i sekretnykh dokumentakh dvizheniia ‘prometei’(Moscow: Sotsial’no-
politicheskaia mysl’, 2012), 120.
41 RGVA, f. 308k, op. 19, d. 31, ll. 88-88ob, and CAW, I.303.4.1976 (18 November 1933 report)
42 See Patrick Beillevaire, “Apresla Bataille: L’egarement japonophile de Claude Farrere.”Les carnets
de l’exotismev. 5 (2005), 243–45.
43 Ikuhiko Hata, ed.,Senzenki Nihon kanryosei no seido soshiki jinji ̄ (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press,
1981), 382.